THE DETERMINATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACCESSIBILITY AND ADA COMPLIANCE THROUGH VIRTUAL WHEELCHAIR SIMULATION

The widespread use of power wheelchairs has greatly increased the requ irements for the accessibility of buildings and other architectural st ructures to handicapped persons. In addition, recent advances in micro computer technology have made possible increasingly sophisticated powe r wheelchair interfaces, such as halo, puff and sip, and muscle contro l mechanisms, which can provide mobility for an even larger portion of the handicapped population. Finally, the ADA (the Americans with Disa bilities Act of 1990) requires handicapped accessibility for (almost) all public structures, We have developed a virtual structure prototypi ng system that allows navigation by a person using a power wheelchair, The system is a tool for three groups of people: (1) for architects a nd designers, it provides structure visualization that can both improv e the handicapped accessibility of building designs and test a structu re for ADA compliance; (2) for wheelchair users, it provides more appr opriate device fitting and training with wheelchair control mechanisms ; and (3) for health core professionals, it provides evaluations of wh eelchair users, The system consists of an instrumented, joystick-drive n power wheelchair connected to a high-performance graphics workstatio n; it simulates the actual speed and maneuverability of the particular wheelchair within a virtual structure. The display generates realisti c interiors containing multiple light sources and surface textures and is viewed in stereo through lightweight polarized glasses. The system maintains a hierarchical data structure which detects collisions betw een the virtual wheelchair and the environment. In this paper we discu ss (1) the system's user interface, (2) the system's hardware and soft ware configuration, (3) the impact of the system on the architectural design process, and (4) future system additions. In the last section w e also discuss virtual manipulation for enabling technology.